The Global City

ChE-1204
Magsombol, Mark Lawrence A.
Magpantay, Ghale Irah

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THE

GLOBAL
CITY
What is a Global City?
An urban center that

POWE R
enjoys significant competitive
advantages and that serves as a
hub within a globalized O E
economic system. P AINNOVA
U L TION
L T
A H
What is a Global City?
A global city or world city
are a concept which postulates that
globalization can be broken down
in terms of strategic geographic
locales that see global processes
being created, facilitated and
enacted.
Why study global
cities?
 Globalization is
spatial because it
occurs in physical
spaces.
 Globalization is
spatial because what
it makes it move is
the fact that it is
based in places.
Global City?
Sociologist Saskia Sassen
popularized the term “Global City”
in the 1990s. Her criteria for what
constitutes a global city were
primarily economic.
She identified The Global City in four ways:

1. Key locations for finance and specialized service firms,

which have replaced manufacturing as the leading
economic services;
2. Sites of production, including production of innovations ,
in leading industries;
3. Highly concentrated command points in the organization
of the world economy;
4. Markets for products and innovations produced.
She initially identified three global
cities:
• New York
• London
• Tokyo
 These are the homes, for instance, or
world`s top stock exchanges where
investors buy and sell shares in major
corporations.
New York Stock London Stock
Exchange Exchange
Nikkei

New York London Tokyo

These are the value of shares provided by
the following countries

$19,300 B
$231.3 B
What are the indicators for
Globality?
 Economic
Power
Centers of
Authority
Centers of Higher
Learning of
Culture
 Economic Power
largely determines
a global city.
Economic opportunities make it attractive to
talents from across the world.
 Global cities are
also centers of
authority. People
from all over the
world know most of
its landmarks.
 Washington D.C.
may not be as
wealthy as New
York, but it is the
seat of American
state power.
The White House,
the most secured
building in Earth,
symbolizes the
military power of
USA.
These are the cities
that house major
international
organizations may
also be considered
centers of political
influence.
United Nations in
New York
European Union
in Brussels
 Association of
Southeast Asian
Nations in Jakarta
The European Central
Bank (which oversees
Euro)
in Frankfurt
 A cities’ global
influence is seen through
the influence of its
publishing industry.
 Certain countries or
places are known for a
certain dream destination.
These are the cities
that also considered
as centers of
influence in culture
and education.
 Copenhagen,
Denmark
This is the capital of
Denmark. It is a small country
that can be toured in 30
minutes; not the home of a
stock market and a
homogenous population but it
is considered as one of the
culinary capitals of the world.
Copenhagen is also famous for
 Manchester,
England
Commonly known as
England`s second city. Once a
powerhouse in industry, it is
now a major cultural hub,
famous for its St. Patrick`s
Day.
London, England
This is the capital of the
United Kingdom. It is among the
oldest of the world’s great cities
—its history spanning nearly
two millennia—and one of the
most cosmopolitan. By far
Britain’s largest metropolis, it is
also the country’s economic,
transportation, and cultural
Oxford, England
It’s the biggest city in Europe, there are
as many celebrities as there are windows,
and for over 2,000 years it’s been an
important location for emperors,
businesses, and trendsetters. But it’s not so
evident why Oxford is famous. Because
it’s only a small university town with a
population of about 200,000 and has never
been the capital of Britain. Yet it still gets
more than 10 million visitors a year and is
often cited as travelers' favorite city in the
Singapore
It is slowly becoming a cultural
hub for Southeast Asia. It houses
some of Southeast Asia's top
television stations and news
organizations namely MTV
Southeast Asia and Channel News
Asia. Its galleries and cinemas
show paintings from artists and
filmmakers from the Philippines
 Vatican City
Vatican City, known officially as the
Vatican City State, is the smallest and
one of the most remarkable countries in
the world. This is a product of the
history of the Catholic Church and the
unification of Italy, and therefore comes
as no surprise that its head of state is the
Pope. This tiny country is of immense
religious and cultural importance across
the world.
The Challenges of
a Global City
`
Global cities conjure up images of
fast-paced, exciting, cosmopolitan
lifestyles. Global cities also have
undersides. They can be sites of
inequality and poverty as well as
violence. In a global city, there will
always be winners, as well as losers.
Cities can be sustainable because of their
density. As Richard Florida notes:

Ecologists
Denser have found
settlement that
patterns
by concentrating
yield their
energy savings;
populationsbuildings,
apartment in small areas,
for
cities and are
example, metros
moredecrease
efficient
human
to encroachment
heat and cool than on
natural habitats.
detached suburban houses.
 In cities with extensive public
transportation systems, people tend
to drive less and thereby cut carbon
emissions. Just like Singapore,
which can boast of a truly
impressive honor: the highest
passenger satisfaction rate in the
world.
It starts with cutting-edge
electronic services, including a
newly enhanced trip planner, and
ticketing options, like an easy-to-
use EZ-link card that handily
 But not all cities are as
dense as the other
mentioned countries, like
Los Angeles. Los Angeles
is an urban sprawl with
massive freeways that
force residents to spend
money on cars and gas.
 Cities like Manila,
Bangkok and Mumbai are
dense, their lack of public
transportation and their
government's inability to
regulate their car industries
have made them extremely
polluted.
` Because of the sheer size of the city
population around the world, urban
areas consume most of the world's
energy.
Concluding to that, if carbon
emissions must be cut to prevent
global warming, this massive energy
consumption should be curbed. This
will require a lot of creativity and
 For example, food products
travel miles to get to the city
centers. Doing this with any
vehicle, can contribute to the
carbon emissions. Will it be
possible to produce food in their
own? One solution is “Vertical
Farming.”
Vertical Farms in New York are
done in abandoned buildings that
may lead the way towards more
environmentally sustainable cities.
If more food can be formed with
less water in denser spaces, cities
 Cities, specially with high
global influence, are also targets
of terrorism, due to the large
populations and their role as
symbols of globalization which
they desire. The same attributes
on what makes workers and
migrants attracted make them
sites of potential terrorist
violence.
Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit
The Global
City and
the Poor
 It was stated earlier that
economic globalization has
paved the way for massive
inequality. This phenomenon
is mostly seen in cities.
Yet many cities,
particularly those in the
developing countries, are sites
of contradiction. The are many
gleaming buildings in cities
but alongside it are
shantytowns in cities like
Manila, Mumbai and Jakarta.
 In most of the world's global
cities, the middle class is also
thinning out. Globalization
creates high-income jobs that
are concentrated in global
cities. These high earners, in
turn, generate demand for an
unskilled labor force that will
attend to their increasing needs.
At the same time, middle-
income jobs in manufacturing
and business process
outsourcing are moving to their
 The moving out of the
middle class in global cities
has heightened the inequality
within them. In places like
New York, there are high-
rolling American investment
bankers whose children are
raised by Filipina maids. A
large global city may thus be
a paradise for some, but a
purgatory for others.
` Global cities are cities and mediums
of globalization. They are material
representations of the phenomenon.
We see globalization through them;
they are places create exciting fusions
of culture and ideas; they are places
that generate tremendous wealth.
However, they possess massive
inequality against the poor.